Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

if that was at me, then i really don't know what thread you've been reading, cos I've been captain optimist for months

otm, it's so disheartening global.

I don't see folks looking for bad news, I see most people itt being cautiously optimistic but rightfully angry about how many damn refuseniks populate our country.

After 5 (acute) years of stressing myself out over their bullshit I'm pretty tired of giving them any of my energy or attention.

Sure, I get that impetus without a doubt. It's just harder to let the guard down when you still have someone unvaccinated in your household, so you do take the fluctuations a little more seriously and get a little more irate about the dumb holdouts.

Some people ITT really desperate to find bad news

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, June 10, 2021 10:15 AM bookmarkflaglink

you misunderstand me. i think it's good that cases are growing exponentially in the UK.

Fewer people at the pub!

i think the issue is vaccination isn't going that quickly for younger people and the variants going around. i got my first jab in canada - which had seemed a bit of a vaccine laggard - before most of my friends got theirs in the uk.

Biden now says 500 million doses of Pfizer are getting donated to struggling countries.

Some people ITT really desperate to find bad news

illustration from the CDC's website of how much 'backlog' data is still impacting the numbers: https://i.ibb.co/bHz234H/6-11-2021-8-10-16-AM.jpg

I don't believe the CDC includes historic cases in their average, so you'll see it's somewhat not impacted, but the New York Times and John Hopkins does.

second jab yesterday, ears ringing like a bastard.

second jab yesterday, ears ringing like a bastard.

Tried to eat oatmeal this morning and, yet again, damn spoon went immediately to my forehead.

On the plus side, I don't misplace my keys as often as I used to.

keys open doors
keys open doors

On the minus side, I think it will become much harder to outrun that spiky Phantasm orb now.

BOYYYYYYYYYYYY

So sick of whiny fucking babies about the masks. Illinois opens back up and one of my favorite record stores posted a thing about how they are going to be requiring masks inside for a little longer, a very reasonable request and a well worded, polite way to make it. Instantly comments like "but why... other stores made them optional", "this is super disappointing to see", "but the CDC says we don't need to".

Just, ugh, shut the fuck up. If you can't handle a mask for 20 minutes while you shop, just stay the fuck home and never leave it again.

there are some who treated the CDC guidelines as an edict, THOU SHALT NOT WEAR MASKS

Yesterday: first time being in an indoor environment (takeout restaurant with a line to order) where <10% of people were masked. Put mine on to go inside anyway, partially out of cussedness, I guess, didn't want to let the feeling of discomfort govern me.

at least he's still actively importing new cases and variants

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Saturday, May 15, 2021 5:32 PM (four weeks ago)

have we figured out whether this is a good idea yet

BREAKING: Delta variant cases jump 240% in one week in UK https://t.co/n6GaqCXrh5

— Evening Standard (@standardnews) June 11, 2021

Neanderthal can break down the data.

Breakdown: not good.

Yes the variant is more infectious, but it's circulating mostly around the non-vaccinated, and they're whinging about.... securing the border.

The blame for this lies with the Prime Minister and his reckless refusal to act on Labour’s repeated warnings to secure our borders against Covid and its variants.”

tbc my own position remains that more than one (1) international public health measure can be taken during a deadly pandemic

But fewer than one is also possible. And easier.

My point is they're scapegoating the border when all that did was let the variant in (probably before we knew it existed), the spread is largely exacerbated by similar vaccination stubbornness to our own Yankees.

Close the border all you want, the shit's going to be the prevalent strain anyway unless (like the US) you get the vaxx-hesitant off the sidelines.

scapegoating the border when all that did was let the variant in

how many ppl have died of the Delta variant in Australia?

I don't know about the US, but vaccine uptake in the UK has been very high so far, so I don't think anti-vax stubbornness is that much of a factor.

My partner's reaction to her 2nd AZ jab was identical to her 1st one, it was like the worst ever MS relapse ever for 24 hours. Mobility reduced to unable to even stand up without collapsing, and she could barely even mover her legs. I'd be interested to find out if people with MS have had similar reactions to Pfizer or the other vaccs because it was a very extreme reaction and quite terrifying at the time tbh.

xxpost Maybe I read the reports wrong, but this latest uptick in UK cases is not only relative to very low previous numbers, but I thought also those catching this delta strain of covid are 95+% those not vaccinated or not entirely vaccinated, which ... makes sense? Very, very, very few of those that are fully vaxxed are catching it, which should be the headline.

"those catching this delta strain of covid are 95+% those not vaccinated or not entirely vaccinated" is true (see table) but isn't really the point. fully vaccinated people are less than half the population (true in the US too). no kids are vaccinated in the UK (overwhelmingly true in the US).

i don't know what the headline should be, and if you're vaccinated you probably don't need to worry about your personal health (congrats!), but the fact that a government with a record of callousness/incompetence/psyhcopathy has agreed to postpone plans to reopen the country by a month suggests it's a fairly big deal to public health.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3l5Nh-X0AIasuK?format=jpg&name=large

more detail here:

PHE report on variants just out. Highlights:
->90% of cases across England now delta
-delta ~66% more transmissible
-Most cases are in school age children
-30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated
-cases of delta sublineage with K417N mutation
🧵

— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) June 11, 2021

A lot of people are not fully vaxxed in the UK, not because they don't want to be but because we have a National Health Service and we're used to having to wait for ages for shit instead of just paying for it and getting it immediately.

Very, very, very few of those that are fully vaxxed are catching it, which should be the headline.

wait should Australia let the variant in or not then

I mean, is it surprising that the virus, in any form, is spreading among those who are not vaxxed or not fully vaxxed? Of course it's not a good thing, and of course people may be unvaxxed for any number of reasons. But a headline that the Delta variant or whichever strain is up 240% or something really needs the caveat that that's among those who are not fully vaccinated, because it could very well be the case one day that we will get a strain that's up 240% among those that *are* vaccinated, and that seems more newsworthy. Unvaccinated people getting sick is kind of dog bites man.

-30% deaths were among fully vaccinated and 17% in partly vaccinated

Wait, so more deaths were among those fully vaccinated than among those partly vaccinated? That seems odd. Does it detail which vaccines?

I mean, is it surprising that the virus, in any form, is spreading among those who are not vaxxed or not fully vaxxed?

how many ppl have died of the Delta variant in Australia?

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Saturday, June 12, 2021 3:37 PM (yesterday)

Looks like lots of additional discussion here:

I see people stressing about vaccination death data due to some unclear #scicomms on here...

So here it is: we know of 33,206 cases of Delta variant (28,917 with vax info)

1,785 were fully vaccinated and *still* got infected (6.2% of cases)

Of these 1,785, 12 died (0.7%)

— Meaghan Kall (@kallmemeg) June 11, 2021

Reportedly those 12 deaths among fully vaxxed most (all?) had co-morbidities, but that is pretty vague.

https://i.imgur.com/bMKoR50.jpg

damn if only everywhere else had the incredible vaccination rates of Australia!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait, so more deaths were among those fully vaccinated than among those partly vaccinated? That seems odd. Does it detail which vaccines?

Two possible reasons for this. Firstly, about 29.5 million people in Britain have had both vaccine doses, compared to 10.8 million who have only had the first dose so far, so there are three times more people in that group. Secondly, virtually everyone in the 'only one dose so far' group will be aged 25-45, whereas the 'both doses' group will contain the vast majority of the most vulnerable/elderly part of the population.

In the interest of my sanity I've deleted the Tweet again & sticking with 12/1,785 (0.7%) based on this data

But I WILL say there's a compound effect of vaccination against infection AND dying which means risk of getting infected with Delta & dying is much, much less than 0.7%

— Meaghan Kall (@kallmemeg) June 11, 2021

this is no way is a refutation on the idea that the Delta variant is a legitimate cause for concern, just additional context (as well as other tweets in the thread). though there is plenty of vaccine hesitance in the UK, it's not like the US's hesitancy problem, where you CAN literally easily get two shots here in the recommended time, and millions of people are "FUCK YOU, I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME" anyway. and I do think the one dose and *wait* strategy was necessary in the UK at the time and did lead to a significant drop in cases. unfortunately, variants like Delta can wreck plans that had previously worked.

being fully vaccinated, will most likely protect you against the variant, but I think the key difference here is that with the original strains of disease, even one shot did a good job of protecting you, whereas here, your protection is far less after just one shot and it's not exactly 'rare' if you get infected after just one shot.

I wasn't paying close enough attention when the greek alphabet names for covid-19 variants were adopted. My impression is that what is now officially named Delta used to be unofficially termed the 'India' variant, as opposed to the 'UK' or Brazil' or 'California' variants. Is that correct?

Yeah, Delta is the Indian variant and, I think, Alpha the Kent (UK) one

ty

unfortunately, variants like Delta can wreck plans that had previously worked.

exposing the population to new variants has fairly consistently led to infection with those variants, whether the plan has been "let the virus rip through the population / let the bodies pile high by their thousands" or "it'll be gone by Easter"

Delta variant is now over 6% of cases in the US, or about 0.002% of the population infected, and 48% vaxxed. Australia has 0.000007% of their population infected with the Delta variant, and 4% of the population vaccinated.

Close the border all you want, the shit's going to be the prevalent strain anyway

what if you'd given me permission in March tho

I'm not sure what we're arguing -- that the Delta variant is dangerous to non-jabbed people?

sic is arguing that the USA should’ve closed its borders in March of 2020 through now iirc

this thread is about right afaict

Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 453

1/ I know everybody’s sick of playing 3-dimensional Covid chess. Sorry, but the Delta variant forces us back to the chess board. Ergo, this 🧵.
If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially if you’re in a highly vaxxed region.

— Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) June 13, 2021

Yeah Wachter's good And that's about right